ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the role of the crusades in heraldic history and how this was discussed, and sometimes challenged, by heraldic historians, particularly in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Historical Anecdotes, Dobson provided a summary of the crusading movement and the Military Orders and highlighted the role of the crusades in the development of heraldry: Nothing seems to have contributed so much to the honour heraldry has been held in as the Crusades. The Saracen's head, the cross or crosslet, star, and a variety of birds and animals are just some of the symbols associated with the crusades. As well as the Ward, Walpole, De Lucy families, a crusading link between the use of a cross/crosslet and the crusades was made by or for T. E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. The symbols chosen for their heraldic coat of arms were another way in which families remembered and celebrated an ancestor’s participation in the crusades.
